Friday, January 22, 2016

I returned to Harrogate
after my whirlwind tour and started back at Roosters. With only a week
and a half left in the UK, it didn’t take long to return to the familiar
routine - up at 4:30am, Skype with my girlfriend at 5am, picked up at 6:20am to
get to the brewery around 6:30am, then a full day of cask filling, cask
cleaning, and other tasks at Roosters, returning back home around 4pm to fill
the rest of my day with whatever came up. It was nice to get back into
the routine, and the guys at the brewery generously welcomed me back.

Back at Roosters.

With the time remaining,
venturing out and exploring more of the UK was not out of question from a
logistical perspective, but as far as I was concerned my travels had come an
end and I just wanted to make the most of the place that I had called home for
the past 3 months - Harrogate. I needed to pay my final respects to the
local establishments that had become my drinking spots - Old Bell, Swan on the
Stray, and Harrogate Tap. Also, from my visits to other breweries around
the UK, I had collected my fair share of beer and there was no way that I was
going to be able to fit them all in my luggage, so I had to invest a little
time sampling the spoils of my journeys. Finally, Oliver had expressed
interest in spending some time with me before I left, so I was perfectly
content letting my last few days in the UK slip away in Harrogate - one last
fish and chips dinner, one last pork pie, one last Roast dinner and Yorkshire
Pudding, a day of Harrogate Town football and drinking, a short excursion to
Leeds to do some Christmas shopping, one last trip to Farrah’s to pick up some
gifts from Harrogate, and some evenings of just catching up and collecting my
thoughts on the things I had experienced in the UK.

Last fish and chips dinner - Old Bell, Harrogate.

Roosters crew.

Last roast dinner - Lamb & Flag, Leeds.

Harrogate Town football match.

One of the greatest
highlights of my entire trip happened on the Thursday after I returned to
Harrogate. About a month earlier, Oliver and I had brewed a beer on the
trial plant at Roosters - it was, in its most honest sense, a collaboration
between Oliver and myself. I had picked the style, an ESB, and had come
up with a recipe for the beer. After a few iterations of the recipe and
some technical discussions with Oliver on what I wanted the beer to be, we
settled on a very traditional malt profile and hop schedule featuring only
English hops. The brew day went flawlessly thanks to Oliver who showed me
the ropes on the well-worn, but trusty system. The iconic Fuller’s yeast
worked its magic on the wort and after a week in the fermenter we sampled the
beer and were more than pleased with the results - a medium bodied, perfectly
balanced ESB bursting with well-rounded bitterness, ripe fruit sweetness, and
very apparent, honest yeast character. We filled one cask and twelve
660mL bottles with the delightful beer and Oliver made arrangements to release
the beer at an event at Major Tom’s in Harrogate.

Early in the evening at Major Tom's

The event was released on
social media as a special Roosters event at Major Tom’s - the world’s only cask
of the special collaboration between Roosters and Present Tense Fine Ales.
On the night of the event, I walked into the pub before the guys from
Roosters had shown up, and I ordered a pint of “The Purist and the Pioneer” -
the name that I had coined for the beer as a reference to myself, the purist,
and Oliver, the pioneer. As much as I was amazed to see the beer that I
had created being served in this pub in the UK, it was even crazier to see, as
I stood at the bar, person after person order and enjoy my creation - the greatest joy for a brewer. I
took my pint, without anyone realizing that it was my beer that was being
served, and I found myself a seat. It took a while for me to realize that
the majority of the people in the pub had come specifically to try my beer -
obviously not because it was MY beer, but because it was a one off beer from
Roosters - and I was incredibly grateful to have been given this opportunity by
Oliver. For anyone with a distinguishing palette, they could recognize
that there was nothing characteristic of Roosters present in the beer, rather,
it was distinctly traditional and characteristically English - that was my
intention...a product of a purist approach. The guys from Roosters soon
showed up and had nothing but good things to say about the beer. One of
the most memorable critiques of my beer coming from Oliver’s friend Rob, a rep
from Lallemand (a producer of brewing yeast) and a former brewer at Copper
Dragon in Skipton, who undoubtedly had an incredible knowledge, understanding,
and appreciation of English beer said that my beer precisely hit every aspect
of a great ESB and was a fine example of real, traditional English ale.
And I was surprised to see later that night a Tweet from him, that as
much as he left an impression on me, I left an impression on him…”An absolute
pleasure to spend time with someone who understands ESB and the finer points of
British yeast”...quite a compliment from a yeast expert to just an American who
loves English ale.

The world's only cask of The Purist and The Pioneer.

As a result of my recent travels
around Oxford and London, I had a clear idea of what a real ESB tasted like...I
had lost track of how many pints of Fuller’s ESB I had consumed. So, it
was fresh on my mind how “The Purist and The Pioneer” stood up to the one and
only Fuller’s. But one thing was noticeably different about the beer that
I had created as I finished my first pint. The pint was beautiful -
crystal clear, poured with the cascade of white aeration settling into a dark
rust colored liquid and coalescing on top to a thick, dense foam head - the
first drink was a mouthful of flavor - malt sweetness balanced with classic
orange marmalade, slight spicy hop character - the feel - silky and smooth.
Then, the next drink, all of that flavor and vibrancy disappeared into a
muddled, but smooth, indescribably drinkable liquid...the appearance remaining
as brilliant as ever with the lacing telling the story of every sip. As I
contemplated the beer in my hand and thought back on how the beer had tasted as
it was being racked into the cask, something came to my mind - the sparkler.

The Purist and The Pioneer.

I have mentioned the
sparkler in previous blog posts and up to this point hadn’t quite made a
conclusive decision as to what I really thought about them. To a
Yorkshireman, the only way to drink a pint is through a sparkler - the argument
emphasizing the appearance of the beer as it is poured and the thick, creamy
head that is formed on top of the pint. However, the argument tends to
ignore or overlook the flavor of the beer...if the flavor is addressed, the
notion of the sparkler negatively affecting flavor is immediately rejected and,
in its place, it is suggested the flavor is not different. In all
reality, though, most Yorkshiremen were born and raised drinking beer through a
sparkler and the flavor that results is the flavor of beer that they expect -
not necessarily better or worse, but familiar. For the use of a sparkler to
be questioned is to concede to a potential paradigm shift in their
understanding of beer. From an unbiased
perspective, it is undeniable the difference that a sparkler imparts on the
flavor of a beer. For some beers it can have a positive effect, but for
other beers it can really destroy the flavor and vibrancy of a beer.

So, as my peers at the
brewery gathered around me, true Yorkshiremen no less, I suggested that maybe
this beer should be sampled without a sparkler, since, in the South, where this
beer originated, they do not use a sparkler. Also, if my memory served me
correctly, this beer had significantly more depth of character than I was
getting from the pint I had pulled through a sparkler. At first, the
reaction was a bit of dismissal, kinda laughing and not really thinking I was
serious, but then I reaffirmed my notion and insisted that my memory of this
beer was much different. So, one of the guys walked up to the bar and
ordered a pint served with a sparkler and another pint served with the sparkler
removed...not a common request at Major Tom’s and certainly a request that
makes the typical Yorkshireman a little uneasy.

Two pints sat on the table
in front of us - the appearance of the beers not drastically different - no
doubt, the sparkler beer had a thicker, creamier head, but the beer not served
through a sparkler still had a head which was relatively thick and creamy.
Then, the first guy picked up the beer not served through a sparkler,
took a discerning sniff, and then a generous sip. Then, repeating the
process on the beer served through a sparkler...saving his judgment until
everyone could make the comparison. It finally got around to me and
immediately the first sip of the sparklerless beer triggered my memory of the
flavors that I had been familiar with. The difference was dramatic, in my
opinion. The sparkler took the life out of the beer, leaving muddled
flavors and a less interesting character in the beer. My
presumptions had proven true, however, it was not a unanimous defeat of the
sparkler, as one or two true die hard Yorkshiremen still preferred the sparkler
and would not accept reality - to each their own.

The night went on and the
collection of pint glasses grew on the table in front of us. By 10:30pm, the
world’s only cask of “The Purist and The Pioneer” had been emptied, and people
started clearing out of Major Tom’s. The UK premier of Present Tense Fine
Ales had been a huge success, and I was incredibly satisfied with the beer that
Oliver and I had created.

The end of the night at Major Tom's.

The last days at Roosters
went by like every other day, save our final evening after work, we all sat
down around the lunch table and I shared my gift of four beers that I had had
shipped over from the US. I said my farewells and caught a ride back
home, where I spent the remainder of the evening sorting out my luggage and
finding a way to stuff 30 bottles of beer, safely without any chance of
breaking, into my two pieces of luggage. They eventually fit after making
a few compromises on my clothing and one bottle, and I resigned myself to the
fact that I would have to lug around 86 pounds of luggage for my multiple
flight itinerary home.

Last pint of cask ale - Black Sheep Special Ale at The Swan on the Stray.

My three months in the UK
came to an end on Christmas Eve…or so I thought. Little did I know how
hard it would be for the UK to let me go. As I was dreaming of Christmas
with my girlfriend and family back in Missouri, the plans for my flight back
home started falling apart all around me. My flight out of Leeds was
grounded due to a bloody propeller (a bird having become a victim of its
landing into Leeds). There was no way for me to make my flight from
Dublin to Chicago, and since I had booked my flight through a third party
website, the airline was warning me of the potential that there was nothing
they could do about it. For two hours, my stress level exceeded a point
that I rarely experience – I called the website who directed me to the airline;
then I called the airline who told me there was nothing they could do and that
I should call the website. I was stuck in an endless cycle of non-sense
at an airport whose staff had absolutely no power to do anything for my
situation.

A glimmer of hope, my only
hope at that point, came when I was told that I could be transferred to a
flight to London and maybe get a flight back to the States on Christmas day.
With no other information available to me because of a complete lack of
competence at Leeds Airport, I boarded a flight to London hoping that Heathrow
Airport would handle my situation a little more professionally. My hopes
came true – a friendly woman greeted me at the Aer Lingus kiosk and I soon had
accommodations for the night with dinner and breakfast provided and the booking
for my flight home on Christmas day. After a little frustration at Leeds,
Aer Lingus came through and treated me to a peaceful Christmas Eve, albeit an
ocean away from where I wanted to be. I landed in Kansas City at 3pm on
Christmas Day with the lyrics of “I’ll be home for Christmas” ringing in my
mind truer than I ever could have imagined.

Flying into London.

Now back in Chicago, after enjoying the holidays with family, I have had plenty of time to reminisce on my time in the UK. The nostalgia of the last three months did not take long to resurface. On my first day back, I found myself sitting at a bar in Holland, MI. I ordered a pint of a non-descript English ale from a local brewery and my heart sunk when the waitress returned with a 16-oz glass of ice cold, over carbonated, murky brown beer - plenty of reminder that I am not in the UK anymore! But what I do have, that cannot be impaired by a dreadful pint, is the memory of the amazing English beer, the gratefulness in my heart of the incredible generosity and welcoming hospitality of everyone I met in the UK, especially everyone at Roosters - Oliver, Tom, Tom, Ben, Stu, Jamie, Dave, Stu, Ian, and Caroline; James Fawcett; Mick; and all of the breweries and pubs that treated me with such respect and freely opened their doors to me to help teach me what it takes to make amazing English ale. It was an amazing experience - one that I will never forget and one that has only reinforced my passion for brewing and rejuvenated my desire to bring the authentic English experience back to Chicago.